Page 31 of She’s a Doll

It isn’t. Please. We didn’t even know each other that well. You don’t know what I’d say.

“You don’t know what you’d say. You’re a hallucination. A weird, fucked-up one about a probably dead girl I talked to, like, one time. Which is just so wrong I don’t even know where to begin.”

I am dead. Kyle Lawson killed me the night of the tea party.

“As fucking if.”

You have to believe me!

“I don’t have to do shit,” she snapped. “I’ve dealt with intrusive thoughts way scarier than you before. Never quite so physically, but hey, I think I like it. Really works that stress out.” I saw her flex, her jaw clench, the muscles in her arms tighten.

I twisted, stabbing frantically at her fingers with the shattered stump of my arm. The sharp edge of my porcelain sliced into her skin. She shouted, pulled her hand back, and brought the hammer down.

I recoiled against the plywood, pressing into the grain of it. It felt like it was moving, roaring by beneath me, a stream, tossed around in twisting rapids. I forced myself through the surface, plunging into it. Not the plywood, but something else, something electric and angry. It wanted to move forward, pulled by a vacuum toward an unseen destination. In a frenzy of confusion and fear, I clung to it, trying to center myself, trying to get away from Nicola and that incoming hammer.

The stream dragged, eased . . . and time slowed.

Nicola’s hammer inched toward me. Her shout turned low and long. The fluorescent light hanging above the workbench started to flicker.

That’s the shit thing about ghost powers: You don’t know what you can do until you stumble arse-backward into doing it.

Before, when I’d attempted to control time, I’d been trying to press my will onto the world . . . not to sink back into it. The difference felt both sickeningly arbitrary and so intrinsic that a part of me couldn’t figure out how I hadn’t managed it before. And yet, it wasn’t easy. The stream tore at me, slipped through me, ripping at some core part of my being, something not fabric, porcelain, or lace. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it for long.

I wriggled, limbless, loose, and already dizzy with exhaustion, dragging myself, centimeter by centimeter, away from the soon-to-be impact zone. I’d just made it when the universe wrenched through my grasp. The plywood shook beneath me as Nicola struck the table where my head had been.

She screamed and swung again.

I frantically grappled with the stream, slowing it down and holding it as I bucked and jerked across the tabletop. A can of WD-40 sat nearby, big enough to look like a blue-and-yellow concrete support pillar. I dragged myself toward it, a journey that felt like it took minutes but must’ve been less than a second. A test of endurance, not just against the brutal buffeting of the time stream but also of my ability to move. Anger. Fear. Rage. Pain. Exhaustion. Desperation. By the time I curled behind the WD-40, the strain of it all left me feeling empty and expended, like my atoms had lost their magnetic bonds and were spilling out behind me like blood.

The hammer struck the table a second time, again where I’d been just a moment before. Nicola’s eyes flicked toward me, her lip curled in an animal snarl.

Wait, I begged, my voice pitifully weak. Wait. Please. I can prove I’m Lucy. I can.

“No, you can’t. You’re nothing but a weird-as-shit mental breakdown.” She swung at the WD-40 can, knocking it spinning across the room. I didn’t even have the energy left to flinch. I lay exposed on the tabletop, a scrap of ruined lace and a couple pieces of porcelain.

Watson11.

“See?” she said triumphantly. “You’re talking gibberish. That’s proof that you’re⁠—”

It’s my Instagram password, I said, my thoughts shaky and small. Watson11. You can log on to my account; then you’ll know I’m not a hallucination. It’s proof. I’d thought of it during the long minutes it took to make it to the meager shelter of the WD-40. The only evidence I could give.

She glared at me, the harsh overhead light reflecting off her brow and nose, leaving her cheeks and eye sockets in shadow. Her fist was tight around the handle of the hammer. Her chest rising and falling in fits and jerks. I wasn’t sure if that was her or the universe, making up for lost time. Probably both. “I’m not on Instagram anymore,” she said finally, voice hoarse.

Please.

“This is fucked up,” she whispered. “So fucking fucked up. You’re a hallucination. Lucy McQuinn is gone. She’s been gone for years.”

I didn’t have the energy to respond.

She cursed and started pacing, the thump of her boots against the floor radiating up through the plywood beneath me.

“Fuck,” Nicola muttered. “Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.”

Time shuddered and she snapped back and forward a few times, too fast to see. When she reappeared she was looking at me, still shaking. I wished I could close my one remaining eye. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I could barely think. If she decided to hit me with the hammer, I wouldn’t be able to look away.

She cursed one more time and, with her free hand, reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

If I could’ve cried, I would’ve sobbed in relief.